Tired of seeing her friends' pictures and hearing their stories from wilderness trips, 63-year-old Emily Bennett of Winter Haven was ready for her own experiences.

By KIM FATICALEDGER CORRESPONDENT

LAKELAND | Tired of seeing her friends' pictures and hearing their stories from wilderness trips, 63-year-old Emily Bennett of Winter Haven was ready for her own experiences.

"The freedom to get out in the wild ... it's like an uplifting of your spirit," she said before a recent ride through the Circle B Bar Reserve. "It sort of leaves a hole in your heart not to be able to go out, and this experience will be extremely uplifting."

Twenty-four years ago, Bennett was in a motor vehicle accident involving a drunken driver. Her speech is slow and deliberate, her arms atrophied. She is self-sufficient but uses a wheelchair and crutches for very short distances.

Bennett became Florida's first beneficiary of the TrailRider, a cross between a lawn chair and a wheelbarrow that can go where it's unthinkable to even consider a wheelchair. Wheelchairs, Bennett pointed out, are "not designed to four-wheel."

A LONG TREK

Melissa Aldridge of the Florida Trail Association spent the better part of a year trying to bring the TrailRider to Florida.

"I should be getting the first TrailRider in the state of FL this month if all goes well," she said in an email Jan. 6. "That is a sweet little device to get quadriplegics and other disabled folks into the woods and wilderness areas."

It would be 22 days of silence until the next subject line declared: "TrailRider update ... Still stuck." The message expressed a pained frustration: "US Customs still has their grubby paws on it. ‘sigh...'?"

Made in Vancouver, British Columbia, the TrailRider was branded as a medical device — errantly so, according to Aldridge — by the Food and Drug Administration, which delayed its delivery.

"Its arrival ... it was huge!" she said. "Money was the first obstacle, of course."

The gently used TrailRider Black Diamond model we used was on loan from the British Columbia Mobility Opportunities Society, which makes the device. It carries a $5,000 price tag, a price Aldridge deemed "perfectly fair." A new unit was $7,000.

"The shipping, just to get it here, was $780 from Vancouver, Canada," she said.

And so the bombardment of daily updates with frustrations over FDA approvals and customs-wrangling was over — for the time being.

THE FIRST RIDE

It finally arrived in Polk County from British Columbia a little more than a week ago, and I became Aldridge's first sherpa guinea pig during our visit to Circle B Bar Reserve.

Aldridge couldn't wait to get me in the device for a trial ride before Bennett took the seat. I climbed in, strapped down my legs and held on while she and her husband, Jim, pulled me around the parking lot and part of a trail.

It was a very comfortable ride, even over parking bumps. The thick foam pads and stable arm rests kept me firmly in place while allowing for a cushy ride.

The TrailRider was developed in the mid-1990s by Sam Sullivan and Paul Cermak and has received a number of updates. In 2005, the maker updated the design and made it lighter, stronger and more transportable. The TrailRider has twice been to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro at 19,341 feet – in 2002 and in 2006.

While we were out with Bennett, the Aldridges took her over a large tree that was down. The pudgy tire had no trouble going over the largest part of the trunk.

As they moved the TrailRider along the groomed trails at a snappy pace, Bennett had the look of a kid just getting her first ride on a go-cart. A broad smile stretched across her face, neck forward, as a slight breeze blew her silver hair back. You could have thought she was bombing downhill in the Soap Box Derby.

‘EUREKA'

Melissa Aldridge understands that expression well. In 2005 she suffered a spinal cord injury and thought she was done with all of her favorite activities.

"The first thing I did is panic," she said. "I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, how am I going to continue to get out in to the woods?'?"

While she was rehabbing, she scoured the Internet — for four years, she said. Finally, she stumbled upon a solution.

"Eureka, they did it!" she recalls shouting, "Sam Sullivan did it! He solved the problem. He simply designed it looking at a deck chair on a pool deck one day, scribbled it out on a cocktail napkin. He cross-bred a bicycle and a wheelbarrow, and here we have it."

Sullivan, the co-inventor of the TrailRider, is a quad-riplegic.

About a half-mile in to the trail, and after Bennett stopped to watch a blue heron just a few feet off the trail, it was my turn to become a sherpa for Bennett. Jim Aldridge and I worked instantly in tandem without pulling and tugging against one another. For a one-wheeled unit, it wasn't as unwieldy and difficult to balance as I expected. In fact, the unit was almost effortless with two people, and it was quite nimble.

Aldridge was wearing leather gloves and in charge of braking, if necessary. The light metal frame weighed about 50 pounds and was outfitted with some user-replaceable parts like the wheel and the Avid disc brake system found on many mountain bikes. For the record, my Cannondale still uses old-fashioned V-brakes and rim pads.

I had the front of the TrailRider for the rest of the 1.5-mile jaunt, passing by friendly and curious hikers craning to get a good look at what I think of as a wilderness rickshaw. My arms, back and neck weren't in the least bit strained. Bennett, of course, hated for it to come to an end.

"It was amazing," she said. "So uplifting!"

BAND OF SHERPAS

As for Melissa Aldridge, this is just the beginning. Now she wants to get everyone on board with her program. She envisions a network of sherpa volunteers and more TrailRiders helping get more people into the wilderness.

"We'll now be able to host a disabled person on all of our hikes," she said.

"Hopefully, then, we'll eventually get this established statewide where the entire Florida Trail Association will be a disabled-accessible hiking organization."

Still, there is the uncertainty of what may happen with the FDA.

Aldridge wouldn't elaborate but said the FDA could still step in an confiscate the device.

An email request for comment from the FDA went unanswered Tuesday and Wednesday.

But Aldridge provided a notice of action from the FDA in which the agency said the device was detained because of misbranding. She also said the FDA gave her until Tuesday to surrender the device or face penalties.

There is no indication what the penalties would be.

An email from the Mobility Opportunities Society to Aldridge this month said: "Please be aware that this item has not been released by the FDA and must be held intact at destination and not sold or used until final determination is made by FDA as to what this is — medical device or not."

Said Aldridge: "I hope folks can use it without a prescription."

Seven other U.S. cities in six states have a TrailRider, including Outdoors for All, a Seattle-based organization.

Jen Vollan, the organization's registrar, said she was unaware of any issues with importing the device.

But she said their program is so well known that she recently received a call from Stephen Hawking's assistant when he was planning a trip to the area.

Conner Inslee, the organization's chief operating officer, said in an email this week, "Outdoors for All purchased the TrailRider four or five years ago, and we had no trouble regarding its use in our program or anything regarding it being medical equipment."

Aldridge wants Florida to be the seventh state on that list. She also wants it to be more accessible so more disabled people can get out and enjoy nature.

Another outing with the TrailRider is being planned for a young girl, and Aldridge will not be dissuaded by government pressure.

"I personally am willing to go to jail for her to have this chance," she wrote in a recent email.

"I'll march right in with a huge smile on my face… but if the FDA or Customs or who-knows-who is going to penalize a tiny little Canadian company for something I have in my hands. Oh crap, right?"

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